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Orient & Asia – Lioness at Large

Orient & Asia

Literature Reviews

Priscilla Royal: Sorrow Without End

Blurb: As the autumn storms of 1271 ravage the East Anglian coast, Crowner Ralf finds the corpse of a brutally murdered soldier in the woods near Tyndal Priory. The dagger in the man’s chest is engraved with a strange cursive design, and the body is wrapped in a crusader’s cloak. Was this the act of […]

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Literature Reviews

Agatha Christie: Murder in Mesopotamia

Any fan of Agatha Christie’s knows that this is one of several novelizations of Christie’s own experience gained during the months and years she spent with her second husband Max Mallowan on his archeological expeditions to (today’s) Syria and Iraq: To what far-reaching extent this is true, though, only occurred to me when I read […]

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Literature Reviews

Q1 / 2022 Reading Recap

Well, as it turned out 2022 began as 2021 had ended — all work and no play, albeit with the addition of a hospital detour to boot.  (Nothing serious, just way more painful and, all told, protracted, than it had any right to be.)  So I’m back to posting one summary post for the first […]

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Literature Reviews

Virginia Woolf: Orlando

As I said elsewhere, given the fact that Virginia Woolf was a 2021 (M)DWS author in residence, too, as part of my exploration of the life and work of Vita Sackville-West’s life and work I decided to circle back to Woolf; or rather, to the link between the two writers, which far exceeds their almost […]

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Literature Reviews

Abir Mukherjee: A Rising Man

Blurb: Captain Sam Wyndham, former Scotland Yard detective, is a new arrival to Calcutta. Desperately seeking a fresh start after his experiences during the Great War, Wyndham has been recruited to head up a new post in the police force. But with barely a moment to acclimatise to his new life or to deal with […]

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Literature Reviews

Agatha Christie: Come, Tell Me How You Live

Blurb: Agatha Christie’s personal memoirs about her travels to Syria and Iraq in the 1930s with her archaeologist husband Max Mallowan, where she worked on the digs and wrote some of her most evocative novels. Think you know Agatha Christie? Think again! To the world she was Agatha Christie, legendary author of bestselling whodunits. But […]

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Literature Reviews

Adrienne Mayor: The Poison King

Blurb: A National Book Award finalist for this epic work, Adrienne Mayor delivers a gripping account of Mithradates, the ruthless visionary who began to challenge Rome’s power in 120 B.C. Machiavelli praised his military genius. Kings coveted his secret elixir against poison. Poets celebrated his victories, intrigues, and panache. But until now, no one has […]

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Literature Reviews

Barbara Nadel: Land of the Blind

Blurb: A body is found in the ruined Constantinople hippodrome: a woman, clutching a piece of red stone. She’s recently given birth, but there’s no sign of the baby. Inspector Cetin Ikmen discovers she was a Byzantine specialist on a crusade to protect the historic but now squalid areas of Istanbul that her enemy, property […]

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Fun and Games Literature Reviews

Jason Goodwin: The Janissary Tree

Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE Festive Tasks, Door 18 — Spiritual Practice or Religious Observance: Read a book with a split timeline — one that takes place in the present and one that takes place in the past — or a book where people from different ends of the spiritual spectrum (believers / nonbelievers, […]

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Fun and Games Literature Reviews

Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express

Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE Festive Tasks, Door 20 — Travel: Read a book that involves the main character travelling, or a story involving pilgrims on a journey of faith, be it personal, or religious. (For example: Eat, Pray, Love would be about a woman on a journey of self realisation.)   The Appointment […]

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Fun and Games Literature Reviews

Martha Gellhorn: Travels with Myself and Another

  Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE   Festive Tasks Door 10 – Peace, Book: Read a book in which the ending of a conflict is a major theme. Gellhorn is a sharp observer and she has a way with words — I’d just wish she’d liked people and, for that matter, the places she […]

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Cooking - Food - Drink Fun and Games Lifestyle Literature Music

Festive Tasks: Door 7 – Gifts

  Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE   Task 1: Are you a fan of gift giving, or is it a burden? Have you figured out a way to balance the commercialization of the season with the desire for a sense of meaning (whether religious or not)? Tell us about it and, if you want, […]

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Lifestyle Literature Movies Music Reviews

February and March 2021: Reading Recap

Well, go figure.  The first quarter of 2021 is already behind us, never mind that I’m still having to remind myself on occasion to write “2021” instead of “2020” … (and we’re even a week into April already, but let that go). Anyway, since I never got around to doing a “February in review” post, […]

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Literature Reviews

S.J. Rozan: China Trade

A monumental shout-out to Hobart, aka The Irresponsible Reader, for bringing this series to my attention by reviewing some of its installments in the good old BookLikes days.  I know that I am shamefully late to the party, but now that I’m finally here, I’m here to stay. China Trade is the first book of […]

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Literature Reviews

Zahra Hankir & Various Authors: Our Women on the Ground: Essays by Arab Women Reporting from the Arab World

One of the last books I read in the first quarter of 2021 was, at the same time, also one of my reading highlights to date — and next to the likes of Barack Obama, Kamala Harris, Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison (as well as Agatha Christie’s multiple appearances in the area of mysteries), […]

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Literature Reviews

Patrick Leigh Fermor: The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos

The third and final part of Patrick Leigh Fermor’s narrative of his three-year trek on foot, begun more or less spontaneously at the tender age of eighteen, from the Hoek of Holland to Constantinople.  Unlike the first two parts (A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water), which cover his wanderings in […]

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Literature Reviews

Robert van Gulik (transl.) & Anonymous: Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee (Dee Gong An)

This was “technically” a reread, but as unlike Robert van Gulik’s series of mysteries that were inspired by this book, I had not actually revisited the original novel itself in a minor eternity, almost all of it felt as fresh and new as if I had been reading it for the very first time. Although […]

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Blog Lifestyle

An Alphabet of My Likes and Dislikes: “U”

This is a post belonging to a new blogging project — the title is pretty much self-explanatory, I think; the project’s introductory post can be found HERE.  Credit for the idea: BeetleyPete. As always, the only thing linking the two items mentioned in this post in my mind is that they both start with the […]

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Blog Cooking - Food - Drink Lifestyle

An Alphabet of My Likes and Dislikes: “T”

This is a post belonging to a new blogging project — the title is pretty much self-explanatory, I think; the project’s introductory post can be found HERE.  Credit for the idea: BeetleyPete. As always, the only thing linking the two items mentioned in this post in my mind is that they both start with the […]

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Blog Cooking - Food - Drink Lifestyle

An Alphabet of My Likes and Dislikes: “A”

This is the first post of a new blogging project — the title is pretty much self-explanatory, I think; the project’s introductory post can be found HERE.  Credit for the idea: BeetleyPete. Today’s entries both happen to be food items, but the only thing that links them in my mind is that they both begin […]

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